When we learn about Mercantilism in History of Economic Thought classes, we generally tend to associate this intellectual movement with policy makers like Thomas Mun and Jean Colbert and with ideas like the monetary balance of payments and trade protectionism. However, as Eric Roll reminds us in his "A History of Economic Thought," Mercantilism was far from being a homogeneous set of ideas and thinkers. Each Nation-State in Europe produced different forms of mercantilist thought, specific to its economic needs.

Furthermore, what we see in the texts of mercantilist authors are often contradictory opinions among themselves about what the course of economic policy should be; especially related to the regulation of interest rates and the need for the formal establishment of monopolies by the so-called chartered companies. And perhaps no country produced such an unusual variety of Mercantilism as the Holy Roman Empire.

In this entirely strange (and often forgotten) country , unlike what occurred in France and England, a non-utilitarian and Aristotelian form of economic doctrine known as Cameralism was developed, which would not only mark generations of German and Austrian economic thinkers until the beginning of the 20th century, but also influence the way we conceive today the so-called "German public efficiency" and the very concept of optimal bureaucracy. In this text, I will explore this economic doctrine forgotten in the sands of history.

I - A Response to Difficult Times: The Economic Rationale

Cameralism emerged in the context of the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648. In this conflict, the German states composing the Holy Roman Empire were totally devastated. The total population of the Empire fell from 21 million to 13 million. The population of Württemberg fell from 400,000 to 50,000. The Palatinate lost more than 90% of its population. Three million people in Bohemia were reduced to 800,000. Berlin and Colmar lost half of their populations, and Augsburg lost about 30,000 people. The human factor became a limited resource within the Empire.

Furthermore, with the Peace of Westphalia, German territory was divided into more than 300 sovereign political units with various restrictions on access to the sea, access to natural resources, and were under constant international pressure exerted by their unified and centralized neighbors, such as France, which ...

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